If this is your first visit, be sure to
check out the FAQ by clicking the
link above. You may have to register
before you can post: click the register link above to proceed. To start viewing messages,
select the forum that you want to visit from the selection below.

NC - Faith Hedgepeth, 19, UNC student, Chapel Hill, 7 Sept 2012 #2

Police are investigating the mysterious death of a 19-year-old UNC Chapel Hill student as a murder.

Faith Hedgepeth, a member of the Haliwa-Saponi tribe of Hollister, North Carolina, was found dead in her home around 11am on Friday.

Police have not disclosed whether they are questioning a suspect or if they have made any arrests. Chapel Hill police have confirmed that they are treating the death as a homicide and say they don’t believe it was a random act.
---
Hedgepeth was a biology major who won a Gates Millennium scholarship to study at UNC.
---
More than 1,000 people from the Haliwa-Saponi tribe gathered to grieve Hedgepeth’s death during the tribe’s annual powwow on Sunday.
---
According to her friends, Hedgepeth planned to return to live with the Native American tribe, which has about 4,000 members, after she finished her studies.
---

I've listened now (it's over an hour long) and believe the podcaster, Steven Pacheco, does a really good & fair job of covering the case -- I don't agree with all his details of course but definitely worth a close listen!
Thanks for this effort Steven!

The Trace Evidence episode does a good job of presenting all of the important information in one place and it also provides certain details, like names of persons of interest, that are otherwise difficult to come by. I also like how he lays out the four or five leading theories re what happened that night. Given that police have the male DNA and believe with 100% certainty that they will solve this crime, it's worth making a list of the male persons of interest:

1. ETJ
2. DB
3. JB
4. RLJ
5. former roommate of BE

Unless I misunderstood something, Pacheco seems to be saying that none of 2-5 has ever submitted DNA.

I've listened now (it's over an hour long) and believe the podcaster, Steven Pacheco, does a really good & fair job of covering the case -- I don't agree with all his details of course but definitely worth a close listen!
Thanks for this effort Steven!

The Trace Evidence episode does a good job of presenting all of the important information in one place and it also provides certain details, like names of persons of interest, that are otherwise difficult to come by. I also like how he lays out the four or five leading theories re what happened that night. Given that police have the male DNA and believe with 100% certainty that they will solve this crime, it's worth making a list of the male persons of interest:

1. ETJ
2. DB
3. JB
4. RLJ
5. former roommate of BE

Unless I misunderstood something, Pacheco seems to be saying that none of 2-5 has ever submitted DNA.

yeah, I don't think he was clear on it, but am almost certain 2-4 HAVE given DNA by now (JB was late in the process, the other two earlier on). #5 I don't know about -- a private investigator was pursuing him, and I presume CHPD did as well, but they've never said.

ETA: as far as details I'd quibble with, too small to mention and argue about here (though I did leave a comment for him about 2 matters). For a 75-min. podcast he did a darn good job on a case there is so much speculative disagreement on!

The Trace Evidence episode does a good job of presenting all of the important information in one place and it also provides certain details, like names of persons of interest, that are otherwise difficult to come by. I also like how he lays out the four or five leading theories re what happened that night. Given that police have the male DNA and believe with 100% certainty that they will solve this crime, it's worth making a list of the male persons of interest:

1. ETJ
2. DB
3. JB
4. RLJ
5. former roommate of BE

Unless I misunderstood something, Pacheco seems to be saying that none of 2-5 has ever submitted DNA.

yeah, I don't think he was clear on it, but am almost certain 2-4 HAVE given DNA by now (JB was late in the process, the other two earlier on). #5 I don't know about -- a private investigator was pursuing him, and I presume CHPD did as well, but they've never said.

ETA: as far as details I'd quibble with, too small to mention and argue about here (though I did leave a comment for him about 2 matters). For a 75-min. podcast he did a darn good job on a case there is so much speculative disagreement on!

He did have several basic facts wrong, just one example is saying that Faith was one of three daughters, one of whom struggled with drugs, IIRC, which isn’t true. She’s the youngest of two daughters. There were other things he got wrong, misstated. He said she was a junior; she was in fact a sophomore. He said she was sexually assaulted, which LE has said “is more likely than not” but is not an established fact. He also said semen was found in Faith. That is not an established fact; he’s making an assumption which may or may not be true. I don’t recall the other things he states which are questionable. It’s a lot of his opinion, which he acknowledges. He did have details regarding names of the Thrill guys (if he was correct). But I don’t think he has any insight that we haven’t covered here.

He got enough wrong so that I’m not trusting his credibility. But the basic potential scenarios he outlines are what we discuss here.

He did have several basic facts wrong, just one example is saying that Faith was one of three daughters, one of whom struggled with drugs, IIRC, which isn’t true. She’s the youngest of two daughters. There were other things he got wrong, misstated. He said she was a junior; she was in fact a sophomore. He said she was sexually assaulted, which LE has said “is more likely than not” but is not an established fact. He also said semen was found in Faith. That is not an established fact; he’s making an assumption which may or may not be true. I don’t recall the other things he states which are questionable. It’s a lot of his opinion, which he acknowledges. He did have details regarding names of the Thrill guys (if he was correct). But I don’t think he has any insight that we haven’t covered here.

He got enough wrong so that I’m not trusting his credibility. But the basic potential scenarios he outlines are what we discuss here.

I largely agree, but do think his report is quite credible (at least as much so as newspaper accounts where he probably picked up some of the mis-info and things still under dispute). The names of the Thrill guys wasn’t new, but has been available ever since the police released documents 3 years ago; in fact he left some names out. But again all the names we have are either White or Black men, no Latinos. I probably have less than 20 names of potential interest, but the police have DNA tested over 700, as an indication of how much we’re still missing. I think his main insight was to put in one place most (not all) of the scenarios people have proposed and most of the key information readily available (again, certainly not all), but no, nothing breaking new ground.

I listened to it last night. It was a good overview of the case, IMO, and yes, a few of the details were wrong.

I had a couple of quibbles myself. The biggest one: I don't think the time of the pocket-dial voicemail is really in dispute anymore. There's never really been an indication that it's wrong at all, but we're past just having a single phone with a time-stamp at this point. LE says they've verified the metadata of the call. If it doesn't make sense that Faith was viciously assaulted in the club by 2 or 3 people and calmly left 45 minutes later, it points to a problem with the transcript, not the time-stamp.

Second, and I've seen it mentioned but never elaborated upon, but what's driving the idea that MR made the 911 call and not KR? Even if one suspects KR, that doesn't make a lot of sense. Is she so overjoyed that her plot succeeded that she handed the phone to MR to do a victory dance in the background? Does MR not question this or think it's weird enough to ever mention again?

I listened to it last night. It was a good overview of the case, IMO, and yes, a few of the details were wrong.

I had a couple of quibbles myself. The biggest one: I don't think the time of the pocket-dial voicemail is really in dispute anymore. There's never really been an indication that it's wrong at all, but we're past just having a single phone with a time-stamp at this point. LE says they've verified the metadata of the call. If it doesn't make sense that Faith was viciously assaulted in the club by 2 or 3 people and calmly left 45 minutes later, it points to a problem with the transcript, not the time-stamp.

Second, and I've seen it mentioned but never elaborated upon, but what's driving the idea that MR made the 911 call and not KR? Even if one suspects KR, that doesn't make a lot of sense. Is she so overjoyed that her plot succeeded that she handed the phone to MR to do a victory dance in the background? Does MR not question this or think it's weird enough to ever mention again?

Yeah, I was thinking something similar. I get why people hear MR in the 911 call --- it does sound a little like her --- but I don't get the logic of why she would be making the call. She is a puddle of tears in her 20/20 interviews so if she knew anything at all about this crime she would have long ago, IMO, spilled the beans. She hasn't. If anyone knows more than she is saying, it is KR.

I only brought over the first post from 2012 and the rest of the posts brought over are from a couple of days ago until today. It sounds like there is a great podcast that will help you catch up on the latest details called Trace Evidence. Listen HERE
Keep up the good work on this thread everyone. We are grateful that you are helping keep Faith's case in the public eye.

<snipped> Or take KR: if not for the male DNA at the scene, she would be, IMO, the lead suspect. The note. The bottle. The 4:30am departure. The 911 call. The I-don't-feel-well-at-2:30am-but-I'm-headed-out-for-a-booty-call-at-4:30am. And yet the male DNA seems to suggest that it wasn't her. Could she have committed the crime but somehow have had a male assist in some way? I just don't see how that is plausible. At the moment I'm left with the thought that LE bungled the crime scene, that it was KR, and that the male DNA is the result of contamination and not the crime itself.

(This post was one of the last ones from the old thread- for some reason, it wasn't carried over.)

If we're talking contamination, I think we're talking something that happened in the lab during testing, though. The male DNA at the scene was, at least partially, semen. Someone earlier mentioned that the semen was collected as part of the crime scene examination and not the rape kit, meaning it was evident on the body or bedding. KR didn't leave that herself, and I can't see how LE bungled the crime scene to the extent they caused semen to be there that shouldn't have been. That brings in a male accomplice as a requirement, and all the issues that scenario has.